The Rising American Electorate is the majority of the American population. We want to make sure they’re the majority of American voters, too.

The Voter Participation Center’s mission is to increase civic engagement among the Rising American Electorate: unmarried women, people of color, and millennials.

The Rising American Electorate is responsible for over 80% of the growth in the U.S. population since 2000, and now comprises the majority of voting-eligible Americans. But because RAE members are statistically less likely to be registered to vote or engaged in the political process, they’re underrepresented in the voting booth.

Our goal is to turn that around: to ensure that the Rising American Electorate is no longer underrepresented in our political conversation, and that the voices of the RAE are heard in numbers proportionate to their strength in the population.

Increasing the participation of the Rising American Electorate begins with voter registration — and with the recognition that we can’t just reach out to the RAE in high-profile presidential campaign years, but instead need a persistent and continuous approach to increasing the RAE’s civic engagement. We need to build an infrastructure of engaged citizens who vote, speak out, and elect representatives who represent their values.

Because of our innovative, research-driven, proven and cost-effective programs — which are all measured for their impact and effect — we understand what works and what doesn’t work to engage the RAE, and how much it costs. This makes us unique in our ability to reach and mobilize the Rising American Electorate through scalable programs that work in tandem with other outreach efforts.

But we still have a particular interest in unmarried women — both because they’re such a large portion of the RAE, and because marital status is still such a significant indicator of registration and voting behaviors among women.